


a string that pulled me

by akisazame



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: 4+1, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Beast (The Magicians), Happy Ending, Inspired by Taylor Swift, M/M, Missed Connections, References to Depression, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26501308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akisazame/pseuds/akisazame
Summary: Eliot imagines making the cute nerd a drink that he'd actually like, a moscow mule or a peach gin fizz, and writing his phone number on the paper napkin beneath the glass. It's certainly toeing the line of common decency that he and his coworkers have unanimously agreed upon, but this isn't just some random attractive customer. Eliot can't even describe what this is, because it's not a way he's ever felt before, like every atom in his body wants to gravitate towards this stranger, to be in his orbit. It's—It's crazy. Eliot feels crazy.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 75
Kudos: 197
Collections: A Million Little Times





	a string that pulled me

**Author's Note:**

> on july 24 2020 taylor swift ruined my entire life. this fic was inspired by "invisible string."
> 
> thank you to [hoko_onchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoko_onchi/) and [ilexa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilexa/) for betaing; [jessalae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessalae/) for solving my word problem; [the_northerlies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_northerlies/) for the tireless research support; and [luzial](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luzial/), [crushinator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crushinator/), and [maerisk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maerisk/) for being my best bitches.

1\. _right into that dive bar_

Eliot hasn't felt quite right in weeks.

He can't pinpoint exactly when it started, but it was roughly around the time he'd woken up upside down on Amita's couch with the worst hangover of his life. He didn't remember a thing about what he'd done the night before, but every single atom in his body hurt, like he'd thrown himself into a blender and turned it to liquify. Even worse than the physical aches were the mental ones; he'd felt _sad,_ a crushing weight of misery, like something horrible had happened to him, an abandonment or a death, but he couldn't for the life of him think of what it could be. He knew that sometimes alcohol made him maudlin, but this was ridiculous.

He'd been shaky on his feet for a few days afterwards, unbalanced in a way that he'd never felt from any substance, controlled or otherwise. His roommates had watched him warily, as though he was unstable or dangerous, and Eliot couldn't particularly blame them. He'd _felt_ unstable and dangerous. Even now, weeks later, the feeling hasn't left him completely, but it's faded far enough into the background that he mostly feels like himself again. His part time job at the thrift store fired him but the bartending job didn't, so he'd begged for extra shifts, both because he needs the money and because he needs a distraction from whatever inexplicable thing is going on in his head. It's a Saturday night, which he used to spend sorting stock at the thrift store but is now spending pouring drinks at the bar, and even though he's been 95% sober ever since the incident on Amita's couch, he still feels strangely unsteady, as if the whole world's been tilted one degree to the left and Eliot is the only one who hasn't managed to adjust.

He's mixing a vodka tonic when the bell jingles to announce a new customer coming in, which is ordinarily a sound that fades entirely into the periphery but this time Eliot feels compelled to turn and look. It's a group of three people, two men and a woman, bundled heavily in coats and hats and scarves that look just a bit too fancy to blend in with this bar's usual clientele. Students who've gotten lost, he thinks, or who took a trip to the Bronx Museum and decided to hang around past dark for a change of scenery. Eliot turns his attention back to the woman who ordered the vodka tonic just long enough to be polite in the hand-off; when he looks for the new arrivals again, they've settled at a table in the far corner and are in the process of disrobing from their winter accoutrements. The woman is tiny and classically pretty, and one of the men is nothing to write home about, but the second man—

He doesn't know why, but Eliot can't take his eyes off of him. He's cute, in the downtrodden nerd way that Eliot has a particular weakness for, but not so jaw-droppingly attractive that Eliot should feel as awestruck as he does. It's a feeling that pervades Eliot's entire body, like something's drawing him to the other side of the room by gravity or magnetic force. He wants to introduce himself to this man, talk to him, flirt with him a little. With crystal clarity, Eliot can somehow imagine what this man he's never seen before, has only ever seen from across a crowded room, would look like when Eliot makes him smile, and laugh, and blush. Even worse, he can practically feel the way the man's long hair would glide between his fingers, and how soft his skin would be to touch. It's a sensation that's closer to a memory than a fantasy, so visceral that Eliot is completely overwhelmed.

Someone to his left asks for another bottle of Corona, and Eliot performs the entire transaction on autopilot, reaching for a bottle and adding the slice of lime and sliding it down the bar while watching the precious little nerd tucked away in the corner. He looks nervous, Eliot thinks, but he'd relax over time like a new pair of shoes, until he fit just right beneath Eliot's chin, tucked tightly against Eliot's side, like he was meticulously shaped just to belong there, and Eliot would hold him and keep him safe, care for him the way he deserves to be cared for, never let anything bad happen to him if it was in his power to prevent it.

Eliot knows all of this and more, just by looking at him. He knows it the way he knows his own face in the mirror, or the way he would know the way back to the farm in Indiana if he ever cared to go, and he has no idea why.

He watches the three of them converse, and for a moment he thinks the cute nerd will be the one to come up to the bar and place their order, but instead it's the other man who approaches, managing to look both very WASPy and aggressively heterosexual while doing so. Eliot puts on his best customer service face and is utterly unsurprised when this walking cliche orders three IPAs.

"I'll need an ID and a credit card," Eliot tells him, reaching for a glass while surreptitiously sneaking another glance at the cute nerd. He checks both cards when the man hands them over: the photo on the ID matches the boring man standing in front of him, who is apparently named James, and the same name is on the credit card. So much for hoping that the cute nerd was footing the bill. Eliot's gaze snags on the ID again, and he gives James his best brilliant fake smile. "Ah, happy birthday."

"Thanks," James says, with the air of a person who expects to get special treatment just by virtue of being born exactly 24 years ago. He glances back over his shoulder at his friends, and Eliot naturally follows his gaze. The cute nerd and the woman are sitting close together, heads curved towards each other like the arches of a heart; they look like they're enjoying each other's company, smiling and laughing and bouncing joyfulness back and forth like a series of mirrors reflecting light. Maybe the woman is the cute nerd's girlfriend? How presumptuous of Eliot, to assume that the cute nerd is both queer and available, although that hasn't always stopped him before.

Eliot sets the IPAs and a bowl of complimentary popcorn on a tray and slides it across the bar to James. "Should I start a tab?"

"Yeah, I think we might be here for a bit," James replies, to which Eliot can only think _really? This is where you want to spend your birthday?_ It'll be a special sort of agony to watch the cute nerd be adorable with his girlfriend all night but, well, it's far from the first time that Eliot has had his hopes dashed.

But then Eliot watches James slide into the chair next to the woman and kiss her on the mouth.

Which, okay, that doesn't _mean_ anything, Eliot reminds himself. This could be some polyamory situation, where all three of them are dating each other, or both of them are dating the woman, or both of them are inexplicably dating James the horrible boring WASP. Except for the fact that, in the moment when James and the woman are performatively sucking face in a dining establishment, the cute nerd looks like he wants to crawl under the table and cry, and isn't _that_ interesting?

Eliot doesn't mean to keep looking across the bar. He has other customers who need his attention, and he does his best to give it to them when they come up and ask for drinks or snacks or to close their tabs for the night. But he can't stop his eyes from wandering over to the corner, where James and his girlfriend are cuddled up together while the cute nerd stares into his IPA as though the answers to all of life's infinite questions are printed on the bottom of the glass. He's only had maybe two sips, which makes Eliot think that James ordered them because it's what he enjoys. How selfish, Eliot thinks. If Eliot were making the cute nerd a drink, he'd choose something light, the sort of drink that hypermasculine types label as _girly_ but are actually far more potent than a fucking craft beer. The sort of drink that would sneak up on him and soften him up, that would make him pliant under Eliot's fingers as he slid them under the hem of his cardigan and—

Jesus. Inappropriate much? Eliot tears his eyes away and stares down at the bar, willing his breathing to slow. What the hell is wrong with him?

Eliot tries to stop looking. He _tries._ But it's like a compulsion, a nervous tic, drawing his attention across the room again and again. The unwanted glass of IPA eventually gets passed to James, and there's a flutter in Eliot's chest as he thinks that maybe this will make the cute nerd get up for a replacement drink, but he stays exactly where he is, smiling pleasantly when his friends are watching and picking despondently at the bowl of popcorn when they aren't. His obvious distress tears at Eliot's heart, like a gaping wound in the middle of his chest, only made worse by the fact that his friends don't seem to see it. How can they not? It's so obvious to Eliot, who's never seen this man before but can somehow perfectly comprehend the language of his body as though he's known it since birth.

Maybe he'll give in. Eliot imagines making the cute nerd a drink that he'd actually like, a moscow mule or a peach gin fizz, and writing his phone number on the paper napkin beneath the glass. It's certainly toeing the line of common decency that he and his coworkers have unanimously agreed upon, but this isn't just some random attractive customer. Eliot can't even describe what this is, because it's not a way he's ever felt before, like every atom in his body wants to gravitate towards this stranger, to be in his orbit. It's— 

It's crazy. Eliot feels crazy.

Eliot lurches to the other side of the bar, like the living dead. "I need to get some air," Eliot murmurs to his coworker Thomas, who came on shift thirty minutes ago and has definitely noticed Eliot's distraction but chosen not to comment on it. "Can you cover me for five minutes?"

Thomas glances out nervously at the crowded bar, then studies Eliot's face very seriously for a fraught moment before waving his bar rag in the direction of the exit. "Just don't leave me hanging too long."

Eliot hadn't realized how oppressive the air in the bar had been until he slips out the back door and into the frigid January night. The cold slams into him, a shock to his system, and he leans heavily against the side of the dumpster and fishes a cigarette and a lighter out of his pocket. He lights up with trembling fingers, takes a long drag and closes his eyes, and immediately he's picturing the cute nerd, like his image has been etched on the backs of Eliot's eyelids. The crystal clarity of it makes him choke, coughing out the smoke like he's fourteen again, sneaking out to the barn with a single Marlboro pilfered from his dad's jacket.

He's going to do it, he decides. It's not like Eliot makes a habit of hitting on customers, despite how good he knows he'd be at it and how much more tolerable it could potentially make his shifts. Ideally he'll wait for a moment when the cute nerd is alone, maybe after James and his girlfriend inevitably sneak off to the bathroom to have ill-advised sex in a stall, which is an unfortunate fixture of every Saturday night bar shift, but in this one isolated incident, it would work in Eliot's favor. Eliot would mix him a drink, and casually slide into James's vacant barstool, sliding the drink across the table with a smile. He'd look up, eyes wide with surprise, then narrowing in suspicion, like he thinks Eliot's made a mistake. And maybe it _would_ be a mistake, but Eliot really doesn't think so.

It's all planned out in Eliot's mind, like a script he can follow, so of course, when he goes back inside, the table in the corner is empty.

"They left, like, a minute after you went outside," Thomas informs him, in a tone that's somewhere between pitying and relieved. Eliot doesn't know what his face is doing, but whatever Thomas sees makes him do that weird forearm bro punch thing that straight men presumably find comforting and non-threatening. "Cheer up, dude. Maybe you'll see him again."

Maybe, but in a city of eight million, Eliot sincerely fucking doubts it.

  


2\. _green was the color of the grass_

Quentin had thought the change of scenery would do him good, moving from the perpetual motion of New York City to the comparative quiet of New Haven. It _had_ done him good for a while; he had new places to go, new classes to attend, and new stimuli to distract him from the nagging ache that gnaws constantly at his bones like the world's most tenacious dog. Summer fades into fall and he begins to batten down the hatches like he always does, setting up his SAD lamp on his desk and adding vitamin D supplements to his usual cocktail of medications. The winter is hard, as the depression blankets him like snow blankets the Green, but Julia is there to keep him from skipping too many of his classes, and he manages to claw his way through just like he almost always did in undergrad. The first truly warm day in the spring is like a miracle, even if Quentin still feels an endless inexplicable pull, as though gravity has decided to exert its force just a little bit harder on him than it does on everyone else.

"Come outside," Julia needles him. She's perched on the end of his bed, leg bridging the gap to his desk chair so she can prod at his thigh with her freshly-painted bare toes. "What could possibly be so important at two o'clock on a Friday afternoon, huh?"

"Uh, this paper that was due at noon?" Julia lets out an exasperated breath, like she can't believe the shit she still has to put up with from Quentin after however many years, and jabs him with her toe again. "Ow, stop it. You're going to get polish on my jeans."

"Nuh-uh, I used the quick-dry top coat. Besides, maybe your lame ass deserves a little Desert Sunrise." She pokes him one more time before withdrawing, hugging her knee to her chest. "Seriously, Q, the paper's already late. Just come outside with me for like, fifteen minutes."

Quentin looks up from his laptop screen, staring out the window instead. The apartment that he and Julia share at Whitehall overlooks a semi-enclosed grassy area, and there's about a dozen people out there enjoying the weather, sitting on blankets with their faces upturned like flowers towards the sun. Even just the warmth on his face through the window feels unbelievably good, and Quentin is suddenly struck with a full-body yearning to be out in the fresh air.

"Okay," he says, punctuating the sentence by clicking the lid of his laptop closed. He turns in his chair to look at Julia before he adds, "But I want to go to the Green."

Julia, for some reason, frowns at this. "You hate the Green."

Huh, Quentin thinks. That's true, isn't it? He's never liked the Green, perpetually too crowded with the most annoying varieties of undergraduates. The Green on the first real day of spring will be a scene out of Quentin's nightmares. But when he thinks about it, he can't locate the impetus for making the suggestion; there's only a horrible unease that permeates his body, curse-like, which he had somehow ignored until now and is only getting worse the longer he stays inside the apartment.

The closest equivalency Quentin can come up with is— that time last year, when he was taking a depression-fueled gap year after Columbia and Julia had come up to visit from Yale for James's birthday, and they'd gone to the Bronx Brewery, and on their way to the bus stop so they could get back to Harlem for their reservations at Clay, they'd walked past a bar that Quentin had never visited or even noticed before, and he'd made up some feeble excuse about forgetting to take his meds earlier and needing to eat food with them, which was a total lie but for some reason he just really wanted to go into that bar, which both outside and inside was indistinguishable from practically any other bar in the city. Once inside, Quentin had been immediately and violently infatuated with the tall, handsome man behind the bar, whose every movement seemed effortless, and he'd spent the entire two hour ordeal stealing glances across the room. Julia had noticed immediately, because Julia always notices Quentin's awkward crushes with the notable exception of the one he'd had on Julia herself, but Quentin had immediately shot down her suggestion to go flirt with the guy because _Jesus, Jules, he's at work, he's literally being paid to be nice to me, are you seriously telling me to go sexually harass this guy?_ But that hadn't stopped him from thinking about it, perpetually, right up until James's level of inebriation had reached critical levels, and so for both Quentin's own sanity and the sake of public decency, he'd suggested it was time for them to go home.

He doesn't know how to explain himself without dredging up the entire history of an event that Julia has almost certainly forgotten, so he dodges the implied question entirely by standing up and tugging at Julia's foot, unbalancing her. She topples over sideways onto his bed, laughing. "You're really gonna look this gift horse in the mouth right now?"

She holds out her hands so that Quentin can catch them with his own and pull her back upright. "No," Julia says, the ring of her laughter still clinging to her voice, "I'm really not."

Whatever chemical imbalance had convinced Quentin to leave the confines of the apartment eases by degrees as he walks to the Green with Julia at his heels. One of the many delightful features of Quentin's particular type of major depressive disorder is not being able to see the depths of his own emotions until he's standing past them, viewing his own patterns of behavior in retrospect. Now, in the fresh air and spring sunshine, he can neither remember why he wanted to leave the apartment nor can he remember why he'd been so keen to stay inside for all those weeks beforehand. When the Green comes into view, he feels something loosen in his chest, like a key being turned, and he feels content with his decision regardless of the emotional turmoil that came before.

He leads Julia to an open patch of grass and they settle down together. Quentin stretches his legs out as far as they can go, and he plants both palms on the ground and leans back to gaze up at the drifting clouds overhead. It looks like the kind of perfect spring day that children draw in crayon, bright blue sky and brilliant yellow sun with a fluffy white cloud or two for emphasis. There are people all around, dressed in shorts and tank tops as though it's 95 degrees outside instead of just 58, and the overpopulation would normally make Quentin's skin crawl but for now he's strangely at peace with it. It's— life, all around him, warm and terrible and _real,_ and it's making Quentin feel more real by comparison, as though the isolation of his winter depression had been slowly transforming him into a ghost and now, among the living, he's snapped back into solidity.

There's something so _familiar_ about the Green suddenly, which— yeah, of course, obviously, since Quentin has gone to school here for nearly a year and had visited Julia a few times the year before that. The Green is nothing new to Quentin, even if he mostly avoids it. But here and now, with the expanse of grass on all sides like a foliate ocean, Quentin feels a wave of nostalgia that he can't place. He imagines picnics that he knows he never had, checkered blanket spread beneath him, scratchy on the bare skin of his calves, his wine glass clinking merrily against another followed by the fruity rush of pinot gris on his tongue. It must be a scene he read in a book, though he can't seem to remember doing that either. It's just a side effect of the depression, he knows, intense mood swings leading to gaps in memory, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating when he finds one and can't manage to piece it back together again.

Some amount of time passes where neither he nor Julia speak, content in each others' company, but eventually he glances at Julia and sees her watching a group of three students, tossing a frisbee among themselves. "Go," he says, nudging her thigh with his foot and grinning when she looks at him, startled to be caught. "You want to, don't you?"

"Amber's in my Administrative Law class," Julia says, sounding apologetic about it.

"You don't have to babysit me, Jules," Quentin tells her, and it's obvious from the way her expression shifts that she'd been intending to do exactly that. "I think I can manage myself for a few minutes."

Still she hesitates, then throws herself across the gap between them to give Quentin a brief hug. "Don't get into any trouble," she teases before scrambling to her feet and jogging off towards Amber and her friends.

Quentin's never been big on people watching, even back when he lived in New York City, home of the weirdest and most interesting people to watch, but out here on the Green without Julia or a book for company, he finds himself gazing at each pocket of people in turn, making up stories in his head about who they are and what they're doing with their lives. The two women sharing a blanket are roommates who are mutually crushing on each other but too afraid to admit it. The man with the curly-haired toddler takes classes during the day and works nights, so every moment he gets to spend with his kid is cherished by both of them. The group of people sitting in a circle are part of a book club that only reads paranormal romance novels and they're involved in a heated discussion about vampirism as a metaphor for sexual desire. The man lying on his back by himself—

Quentin feels caught, like a fly in a spider's web. Paralyzed, like he's been bitten by a venomous snake.

It can't really be the same man from the bar, can it? The odds are so infinitesimal that they're not even worth the attempt at calculation. But whether it is or isn't the same person Quentin was so drawn to over a year ago, he feels that same pull again, like he's caught in an undertow. He wants to bridge the gap between them and cover the man's body with his own, feel the man's long arms around him, press their foreheads together before leaning in and catching his lips, his mouth warm and wet and tasting like grapes and the stale note of cigarettes, and Quentin's whole body would light up from the inside out and he just— he just wants to—

What? No, that's— where did that come from?

Quentin tears his gaze away, instead staring down at the grass beneath him. His heart is pounding in his chest, so loud and insistent that it's drowning out everything else. Is he having a manic episode? He could be. A panic attack, at the bare minimum. Yet another thing to blame on his fucked up brain chemistry. He tries to focus on his breathing, to force his pulse to slow down, but he still feels dizzy with desire for a person he's never even spoken to. As though he needed another bullet point on the ever-expanding list of Reasons Quentin Coldwater Is Legitimately Insane. _Do something!_ insists the little voice in the back of Quentin's mind, the one that usually only gives him bad advice like _don't get out of bed today_ or _pain will make you feel more alive._ But his body feels like it's put down roots, binding him to the ground, while his heart feels like it's filling with helium.

"Q?" The voice sounds like it's underwater. "Quentin?"

A warm hand on Quentin's arm. Julia. "Hey," Quentin manages, looking up at her and plastering a smile on his face but ultimately unsurprised when his forced expression doesn't wipe away her look of concern. "Sorry, I guess I did need babysitting."

"I told you that you hate the Green," she says in a way that manages to avoid sounding patronizing. Only kindness, through and through. "C'mon, I heard that someone has a paper to finish."

Quentin only glances back once, to see the man still sprawled on his back, eyes closed, nose pointed to the sky. It's probably not even the same guy, Quentin reasons. How crazy would that be?

  


3\. _on your first trip to LA_

Eliot has probably lost his mind.

That's the only explanation he has for why, after yet another round of rejections from yet another round of off-off-Broadway auditions, he packed as much of his shit as he could into a single rollaway bag and proceeded to take a convoluted series of trains, busses, and one memorable semi-trailer truck clear across the country to Los Angeles. It's been nine months since he was spit out at Union Station, and he still doesn't know whether the whole thing was a terrible mistake. Something had felt wrong about New York City, but something feels differently wrong about LA. Eliot works two jobs and spends every spare minute scouring Actors Access, and all he has to show for it are a couple of gigs as a background extra and a bit part in an all-twink production of _A Christmas Carol_ , so really the only thing that's changed is the weather.

His single saving grace has been his new platonic life partner Margo, who he met at a cattle call audition for some high fantasy movie, where Eliot was immediately cut for being too tall and Margo was immediately cut for being too ethnic, whatever the fuck that meant. Eliot had been ready to go directly back to the house he was sharing with six near-strangers in West Hollywood, where he would wallow in misery with the week's fifth instant ramen packet, but Margo had invited him to a party in Echo Park. They'd both gotten spectacularly drunk and ended up sitting fully clothed in the next door neighbor's pool, Eliot perched on the concrete steps with Margo in his lap, her arms draped around his neck. She'd told him about her dad kicking her out when she decided to major in theater at UCLA instead of business, so in the interest of fairness Eliot had told her about all his bullshit from Indiana. The owners of the pool were kind enough to not call the police, and they'd fallen asleep in Margo's car, strategically parked twelve blocks away from the party. Eliot had moved in with her three weeks later.

Spring in Southern California doesn't look or feel significantly different from any other season in Southern California, which Eliot thinks might be contributing to the feeling that he's trapped in some kind of infinite loop, each day barely different from the last. The air isn't any fresher, though he's certainly not helping by leaning out the window of the apartment to exhale smoke into the smoggy sky. He's felt vaguely agitated nearly every day he's lived here, but today it's like a fever under his skin, immolating him from the inside out. "We should go somewhere," he calls back into the apartment, where Margo is sprawled on a yoga mat in the middle of the living room.

Margo drops whatever pose she's doing and rolls onto her stomach, propping her head on her folded arms. "We talking business or pleasure?"

"If the world were just, darling, then business would be pleasure. But, alas, as we are but starving artists, we must continue to separate the two." He takes one last drag of his cigarette, then crushes it in the windowsill ashtray. "Shall we get lunch?"

"Would temporarily solve fifty percent of the starving artists problem," Margo agrees. "Walking or driving?"

They settle on driving because Margo spontaneously decides she wants to go to her favorite restaurant in Thai Town, but they end up walking anyway because it's Los Angeles and therefore impossible to find street parking anywhere near their actual destination. They head north up Bronson Avenue until they reach Hollywood Boulevard, and Eliot knows that they should turn right, but something deep in his marrow tells him he should turn left instead.

So he does.

"Hey!" Margo shouts, her voice growing distant as Eliot walks in what he knows is the entirely wrong direction. "Where the fuck do you think you're going?"

"I'm not hungry yet," Eliot lies. 'Starving artist' has accurately described him from the minute he arrived in New York City when he was eighteen, and moving across the entire country hasn't changed that for the better. "I feel like taking a walk, don't you?"

Margo makes a frustrated noise, but it only takes another few seconds before he hears the click of her stilettos on the sidewalk behind him. They walk in silence for a couple of blocks, and Eliot can practically feel the irritation radiating off of Margo, intensifying with every intersection they cross. The density of the pedestrian traffic steadily increases, and Eliot doesn't realize why until he looks down and sees Gregory Peck's star at his feet.

"Are you fucking shitting me right now?" Margo demands. Eliot just keeps walking, like he's in a trance. "This is not shit we do. This is tourist shit. We are not tourists."

"I know," Eliot says, and he means it. On any other day, he wouldn't be caught dead within five blocks of the Walk of Fame. But he can't explain the feeling he has because he barely understands it himself. It's like he's a fish, hook caught through his lip, being inexorably tugged down Hollywood Boulevard. It feels like—

Like that time, almost a year ago, when he'd taken the train to New Haven to see his old roommate Heloise in the ensemble of the Yale Repertory Theatre production of Assassins. They hadn't even been particularly close, Eliot and Heloise, but she'd sent out invites over Facebook, and something deep inside Eliot's chest, which he often drowns out with alcohol, positively screamed that he needed to go. Despite the fact that he knew absolutely nothing of value to do in New Haven apart from seeing his former roommate singing Sondheim harmonies, he'd been compelled to take an early train, and it had been early afternoon when Eliot had arrived. He'd set out from the train station with no particular destination in mind, making turns at random until he ended up on a beautiful expanse of spring-green lawn, filled to the brim with college students enjoying the first warm day of the year. Somehow, Eliot had felt a sense of rightness settle over him in that moment, like a mantle or a cloak; he'd practically flung himself onto the grass, long limbs sprawling in every direction, and stared up into the sky for hours and hours.

They've been walking for twenty minutes and accosted by six different people dressed as various members of the Avengers attempting to trick them into taking photos before Margo finally loses her temper. "Are you drunk?"

"No."

"High as a fuckin' kite, then."

"I'm not."

"Then who the hell shoved a bug up your twat?"

"I don't _know,_ " Eliot says, skidding to a stop and whirling to face her. She has to stagger back so she doesn't march right into him. "I just feel like I have to be here right now, okay?"

"At fucking Grauman's?" Margo asks, gesturing incredulously to her right.

Eliot turns, and— oh, they're standing across the street from Grauman's Chinese Theatre. There are tourists littering the place, gawking at the handprints in the concrete and taking photos, and there are two separate tour groups, one on each side, each with their own struggling actor tour guide explaining the site's illustrious history. Eliot scans the crowd, not sure what he's looking for but he knows, he _knows_...

And then he sees him. The cute nerd from the bar.

It's been two years since Eliot spent two hours captivated by this stranger, and it's not like he's been seeing the guy in his dreams or anything; in retrospect, he can't recall a single time that he remembered the man's face after that agonizing Saturday night. But seeing him again now is like being dunked in ice cold water, a shock to Eliot's entire system. He feels the same magnetic pull that he did before, a force so strong that it feels like his ribs are crushing in on his heart.

"El?" Margo is saying. "Hello? Earth to Eliot?" He can't look at her, but she must follow his gaze because she asks, "Do you know that guy?"

"No," Eliot hears himself say, "I don't."

He doesn't, but... he does, somehow? No, no, he doesn't. But he _wants to._ Yes. That sounds right. He wants to know this man, the shape of his smile and the sound of his voice and the taste of his skin. Eliot's heart is thumping rabbit-quick; he feels electric, all his wiring exposed.

"Okay," Margo says, drawing out the vowel. "So what's the game plan here? Because if you dragged me all the way down here just to pull some creepy stalker shit on this dorky tourist, I'm out. I didn't walk a mile and a half in these shoes to get charged with a misdemeanor. I just wanted some goddamn tom kha gai."

Eliot has no plan; all he knows is that he missed his chance that first time, and he'll be damned if he's going to miss it again. He looks up and down the street, judging the distances, before moving as quickly as he can through the crowd towards Orange Drive. Margo shouts something after him, probably a curse, but he ignores her, smashing his palm into the crosswalk button and staring up at the traffic lights, willing them to change.

He wants to sprint across the street when the signal changes, but the crosswalk is packed full of tourists, and even as he reaches the north side of Hollywood Boulevard and starts dodging his way back up the street towards Grauman's, he can already feel his heart sinking like a stone in his chest, predicting the inevitable outcome: when he reaches the theater, both of the tour groups are gone, and the cute nerd is nowhere to be found.

Some amount of time passes while he just stands there, surrounded by oblivious bystanders, staring up at the towering pagoda of the theater. There's a small part of him that wants to give chase, to somehow track the cute nerd down at some other godawful tourist trap, but he knows it's a pointless endeavor. There are so many places he could be by now, and that number only increases exponentially over time; he could spend all afternoon trailing him around the Greater Los Angeles area and never be able to catch up. Eventually Eliot feels Margo at his side, her warm body pressed up against him as she wraps both her arms around his waist. "Sorry about your crush, big guy."

Eliot wants to insist that it's not a _crush._ It's something more than that, a feeling that possesses him, mind, body, and soul. He's never had a crush that's consumed him in quite this way before. But there's a certain logic in Margo's description, because what more could it possibly be? He doesn't even know the man's name.

He squeezes Margo's shoulders with one arm, and she looks up at him with her big doe eyes, and— he doesn't feel _better,_ exactly, but it's probably the best he can do. "C'mon, Bambi," he says, pulling away but catching her hand in his, "I owe you some Thai food and a foot massage. Preferably, for the sake of the public health code, in that order."

  


4\. _for the boys who broke my heart_

Julia studying law while Quentin studies philosophy means that even though Quentin started a full year after Julia did, they get to graduate together. Quentin's graduate advisor seems to be angling for him to continue on until he gets his doctorate, but the idea of staying at Yale without Julia is entirely too depressing to contemplate. Besides, two years studying graduate-level philosophy hasn't brought Quentin any closer to understanding— basically anything, so he can't see how much difference another three or four years will make. Rather than continuing to rack up tuition fees to contemplate the great questions of the universe, an activity he has no problem doing both without academic guidance and for free, Quentin follows Julia back to New York City, where the two of them share an apartment in Lenox Hill that Julia's parents pay for. Julia, the eternal overachiever, passes the bar on her first try and immediately gets a job at the Legal Aid Society; Quentin, the eternal disappointment, works a shitty 9-5 entering data for a facilities management company, which is so hideously boring that he can feel his soul being actively siphoned away as he does it.

Time seems to move both very quickly and very slowly, and winter arrives both earlier and later than Quentin expects, with the resultant shift in mood following right behind. He spends his nights and weekends huddled under a blanket in his bed or, with Julia's intervention, on the couch, staring at a book or his phone or his laptop or the TV, desperate to feel anything at all but also resigned to simply feeling nothing. Julia does her best, inviting him out with friends and occasionally setting him up on dates, but everything feels empty in both the normal seasonal depression way but also in a new and more upsetting way that he can't fully define. The closest he can come to describing it is that it feels like something inside of him has eroded, slowly broken down by the elements, and now there's a fundamental part that's simply gone forever unless he can find a way to somehow rebuild it.

He doesn't think he'll rebuild it by sitting on the floor of the apartment's living room on a Thursday night, his back against the couch, watching some movie he can't remember the name of while Julia lounges on her side above him and idly plays with his hair, but, well. Weirder things have happened, right?

The movie is probably interesting, but Quentin can't concentrate on it at all, the images on the screen fuzzing around the edges as his eyes unfocus, distracted by Julia's hand in his hair and the relentless spiral of his own thoughts. He'd had a glass of wine with dinner, which sometimes helps but was clearly not enough tonight, and he briefly considers getting up for another glass but all of his muscles feel leaden, anchoring him to the floor. The worst part about it, he thinks desperately, is that he doesn't _want_ to feel this way, which— yeah, okay, that's been his constant refrain since he was eight years old and started inexplicably crying about _literally everything,_ but something about _this_ bout of depression feels fundamentally different from every other bout of depression in his life. It's that eroded feeling, maybe, a sense that, despite the insistence of every therapist he's ever had, there actually _is_ something broken or missing from the fundamental core of him, which of course raises a philosophical question of personal identity: if something is missing, is he still himself? And how could he possibly know either way? If he can't define what he's lost, then—

Something catches Quentin's eye, a flash of color, there and gone, and he feels all the air rush out of his lungs, like he's been sucker punched. It was only a second but it's seared on Quentin's retinas, burned in like a ghost image on an old CRT monitor. 

"Julia, wait, pause it," Quentin blurts out. He can barely hear his own voice over the pounding of the blood in his skull.

Julia, to her credit, stops the movie right away. "You okay? Do you need something?"

Quentin's mouth is horribly dry. "C-can you go back, like, thirty seconds?"

"Sure," Julia says, sounding skeptical. She taps a button on the remote a couple of times, making the screen flicker through images like a slideshow, then looks over at Quentin, eyebrow raised, as she hits play again.

They both watch the scene again, a sweeping wide shot of a crowded nightclub dance floor, and right before it's about to cut to the protagonist standing at the bar— " _Stop,_ " Quentin shouts. He's reaching for the TV screen before he realizes he's doing it, crawling forward on his knees so he can point at one of the men, his image mostly blurred out. He's tangentially aware of his popcorn bowl, tipped over next to him, spilling its contents on Julia's rug. "That's him."

There's movement behind him, and then Julia is beside him on the floor, where he's kneeling in front of the TV like a supplicant. He can practically feel her gaze, eyes like tiny heat lamps in the front of her face, but he can't look away from the screen. "That— random extra?"

"Yes," Quentin says.

"And that's... who, exactly?"

"I don't know, Jules," Quentin says, fully aware of how nonsensically upset he sounds. He doesn't know how to explain the— visions, god, even in his own brain he sounds like a lunatic, the _visions_ that he sees and hears and feels and tastes every time he sees this man's face. He's barely recognizable on the screen but he's there in vivid technicolor when Quentin closes his eyes, exactly as he was in that bar in the Bronx, tall and dark and sharply dressed and— perfect, just perfect, and Quentin wishes not for the first time that he could cast a spell that would send him back to that moment, so he could go up to the bar and probably stammer his way through an introduction, but he wouldn't have time to be embarrassed before the man would smile at him, warm and inviting, so totally unlike the way anyone else has ever looked at Quentin before in his life.

Julia's hand touches his shoulder. "Are you sure you're okay?"

He turns to look at her, the person he's confided his secrets to for his entire life, and everything breaks loose inside of him. "You— you don't remember this guy? The bartender from that place we went to on James's birthday a couple years ago?"

She frowns, then turns to examine the fuzzy image on the screen. "Maybe? I mostly remember James acting like a dickhead and you sulking into your drink. But why would a New York City bartender randomly be in this movie?"

Quentin laughs wildly. "How should I know? But it's him, Julia, I swear to god it's the same guy."

Julia leans in a little closer, nose nearly touching the screen, before settling back on her folded legs and turning to face Quentin again. "Q," she says, very seriously, scrutinizing his face with the same intensity as she'd scrutinized the still frame on the TV, "we seriously have to get you laid."

Jesus Christ. "How is _that_ your takeaway?"

"Because," Julia says, mirth cracking through her veneer of solemnity, "I'm trying to watch a movie with you and you're randomly lusting—"

"I am not _lusting_ —"

"—after some tall, handsome background extra. You do remember that we picked this movie because the actual actors are hot, right?"

"I'm pretty sure extras are actors too, Jules," Quentin insists, knowing even as he says it that it's completely beside the point but feeling compelled to defend a total stranger's professional honor all the same. He shouldn't even care, and yet—

"When was the last time you went on a date?" Julia asks, as though Quentin hadn't spoken. She sounds nice about it at least, not judgmental at all, which is more than he can say for all the times his mother asked him that same question in undergrad, as though it had ever been any of her business.

Quentin has to think about it, which is already a terrible sign. "There was, um, Dylan? The one you hooked me up with from Legal Aid."

"That was almost two months ago," Julia informs him, as though he's somehow unaware. "And his name was Devon, and he told me you spent the entire dinner fidgeting with your watch."

"I was nervous! And he was a total stranger! And it was a new watch!" He leaves out the part about how he'd somehow known, as soon as he'd set eyes on Devon at the restaurant, that something was— not right about him. Not about Devon as a person, who was good-looking and gracious and handily carried conversation for the entire duration of the meal without seeming annoyed by it, but about Devon-and-Quentin, as a potential unit, though any time Quentin tried to articulate to himself why he felt that was the case, he could only come up with horrifically shallow reasons like Devon's height or the color of his eyes, which made Quentin feel like even more of an awkward monster than he normally did. Devon had sent him exactly three texts, spread out over the week following their date, and Quentin had agonized over them before finally deleting the entire text chain and blocking Devon's number. "God, why are we even talking about this?"

Julia smirks. "Same reason we had to pause the movie to play Where's Waldo with some bartender you've apparently been fixated on for the past three years."

"I'm not—" Quentin squeezes his eyes shut and runs his hand through his hair, as though that will somehow settle the rapid swirling of his thoughts. Objectively, even when divorced from the fact that he has a diagnosis that proclaims him as such, the way he's acting right now is pretty crazy. But there's no way he can make Julia understand how he feels every time he's seen this man, in the bar and on the Green and now here in the background of this movie. It's how he imagines rats must feel in the presence of the Pied Piper, or how a snake must feel when it hears the charmer's song. Besides, what good would it even do? It's not like he can ask the guy out through Julia's flatscreen TV. "Sorry," Quentin says finally, settling back against the couch, feeling his spilled popcorn crunch beneath his legs. "I'm just seeing things, I guess."

"Okay," Julia says, sounding only mostly placated. She stretches to grab the remote from the couch, then wriggles in next to Quentin on the floor, resting her head companionably on his shoulder. "But after this, we're setting you up on Tinder."

  


5\. _gold was the color of the leaves_

It's not failure that brings Eliot back to New York City from Los Angeles, but a fundamental clash in personalities. Creative differences, one could say. From Eliot's New Yorker perspective, LA had felt stagnant, like everyone was content to simply stand still and wait for things to happen. But that's never been Eliot's style, and that need to seek gratification is what sends him across the country once again, back into the still-open arms of the city that never sleeps.

Fittingly, now it's Eliot who never sleeps.

Amita, bless her heart, had agreed to let Eliot crash on her couch until he found his own place to live, but a large contingent of Eliot's crowd from two years ago has since either moved out of the city or are living exclusively with their partners. He hadn't intended to stay at Amita's for more than a few days, but those days stretch to weeks and then again to months, and by the time fall rolls around he's still basically a squatter in an apartment that was already filled past capacity when he arrived.

But despite the cramped living situation and his unenviable part time jobs — a different bar this time, and an usher at Lincoln Center, which at least has the advantage of being acting-adjacent — it does feel better to be back in NYC. Whatever restless thing had been constantly fluttering in his chest nearly the entire time he'd been in LA hasn't calmed entirely since he's moved back, but it's quieter now, easier to deal with or ignore without inching ever-closer to an actual capital letters Substance Abuse Problem. He's mostly come to terms with the fact that he'll never be a successful actor, though he still browses the pages of Backstage and goes out for auditions, more out of habit than anything else. He can't decide whether Hollywood killed his passion, or if he's just given up.

He'd convinced Margo to accompany him on his Cross Country Road Trip Volume Two: West to East Variation, but while they were Marie Kondoing her entire closet the week before they were set to leave, Margo had gotten a phone call offering her a job as a PA for a young but ambitious female film director, which she had agonized over accepting until Eliot had told her in no uncertain terms that she'd be crazy not to go for it. He still talks to her every day, usually as he walks from Amita's apartment to the theater or from the theater to the bar, and she tells him about how she's gained five pounds from the incredible donuts at the craft services table while he tells her about the Stepford Wife bridal party that had basically taken over the bar for a bachelorette the night before.

"Were they white women dancing in a circle?" Margo asks. "Those bitches are always dancing in circles."

"They were indeed," Eliot says. "Please pour one out for my favorite purple tie, sacrificed to the altar of the scavenger hunt."

"The one with the polka dots?"

"The very same."

"Those _bitches,_ " Margo repeats, practically spitting the word into the phone, which makes Eliot laugh. God, he misses her.

He's walking back to Amita's apartment in the Upper East Side after working the Sunday matinee at the Claire Tow, cutting through Central Park with Margo's exasperated voice for company. Normally he'd be speeding through in typical New Yorker fashion, barely sparing a glance at the world around him, but weeks of chronic insomnia are taking their toll, slowing his pace to a lazy amble. It doesn't particularly matter tonight; for once, there's nowhere else he needs to be. There's something easy and relaxing about the park at sunset, the leaves on the trees dyed vibrant orange and yellow and brown and red, and Eliot finds himself veering off 65th Street, meandering slowly northeast. He's been tense, he realizes, wound up tightly like a clock, and each step loosens that tension by degrees, letting him breathe in deeply for the first time in recent memory.

"Did I ever tell you about my cousin Layla's bachelorette?" Margo is saying in Eliot's ear as he wanders up the path towards the Olmsted Flower Bed. "Now those were some ladies who knew how to party."

Eliot laughs and begins conjuring a witty reply, but a figure in the garden catches his eye, silhouetted by the sunset, limned in golden light. The person is facing away, wool coat and tartan scarf obscuring most of the details, but every single atom in Eliot's body knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt—

The cute nerd turns around and, for the first time, their eyes meet.

"Bambi," Eliot manages to say, "I'm going to have to call you back."

Eliot fumbles his phone into his pocket, and the two of them simply stand, motionless, staring at each other for what seems like an impossibly long time. He can't tear his eyes away, can't imagine _wanting_ to tear his eyes away. It feels like his heart is a magnet in his chest, pressing at his skin, desperate to connect with its opposite. They both stagger forward at the same time, not quite closing the gap entirely, just staring, staring, staring like men possessed.

Eliot opens his mouth to speak at the same moment that the cute nerd does, and some part of Eliot wants to defer, to let the stranger speak first, but the words bubble up out of him anyway, like a river flooding its banks, like a firework exploding, and they both say at the same time— 

_"Do I know you from somewhere?"_

  


-1. _all my past mistakes in barbed wire_

"There has to be _something,_ " Quentin said breathlessly, pulling another book from the shelf and flipping to the index in the back. "You're sure there isn't some kind of fancy locator spell we could do?"

There didn't seem to be anything promising in this book either, for any of the possible plans they'd concocted. They'd spent hours in the musty dark of the library and were no closer to a solution than they were when they'd left Dean Fogg's office that afternoon. Quentin angrily tossed the book aside, but Eliot intercepted it in its arc, floating it safely down to the growing stack on the floor. "If there was a fancy locator spell, don't you think Henry would've used it already?"

"You're not _helping,_ " Quentin snapped. He could feel the tears gathering behind his eyes again, which was just— fucking ridiculous, honestly, how much could one person cry in one night? Surely he'd get dehydrated eventually. "It's— it's like you _want to_ —"

"Don't be stupid, Quentin," Eliot interrupted. His tone was blade-sharp, and Quentin flinched back. Regret flooded Eliot's features immediately, and he set his own book aside to hop up from where he was sitting on the table, crossing the space between them in an instant. "I promise, baby," Eliot said, cupping Quentin's jaw in his hand, using his thumb to gently nudge Quentin's chin up. There was layer upon layer of emotion in Eliot's eyes, guilt and worry and fear and— love, so much love, so bountiful that it nearly overshadowed everything else. Even after months together, even after everything that had happened in the past forty-eight hours, Eliot still loved him. "We're going to figure something out, I swear."

"Okay," Quentin said. He leaned up greedily for a kiss, and Eliot didn't hesitate to give it. Quentin tried not to think about how many more kisses they might have left, before—

It had been a mistake, all of it. Dean Fogg had asked Eliot to search for a missing book that was somewhere in New York City, and Eliot had decided it was the perfect opportunity for a date. _It's part of a set,_ Eliot had explained, gesturing at the book that fluttered around the common room of the physical kids cottage. _Like you and me?_ Quentin had replied, laughing, because he'd meant it as a joke, but Eliot had smiled and looped his arms around Quentin's neck and said _yeah, baby, just like you and me._ So they'd taken the book through the portal into the city, and it had all seemed fine until they actually found the missing Volume One, at which point Volume Two had ripped itself free from Quentin's hands and the two books had fled together. Eliot and Quentin had spent the rest of the afternoon and most of the night searching before finally admitting defeat, and Eliot had spent the remainder of the night with his arms wrapped tightly around Quentin, trying desperately to convince him that they wouldn't get in trouble.

But, of course, they were in huge trouble.

"So," Eliot said, pressing his forehead to Quentin's before pulling away to go pluck another book from the shelves, "finding the books is out, unless we can convince Henry to let us go full vigilante on some hedges."

"It's not fair," Quentin muttered for probably the twentieth time that night. "Segregation of information is some classist bullshit and—"

"Quentin, my love, you're not going to change the guiding principles of Brakebills with an impassioned argument." Eliot paused, then turned back towards Quentin with a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Although, if anyone could do it, it'd be you."

Quentin let out an exasperated noise. "So just let me—"

" _No one_ should have those books," Eliot cut in with an air of finality. "They were on loan from the Neitherlands Library. Highly classified information. One book getting out wasn't so bad, because you need the information from both volumes to cast any of the spells. But now—"

Quentin groaned and scrubbed both hands over his face. His cheeks were wet under his fingertips; he hadn't even realized he'd started crying again. "Okay," he said, voice trembling with emotion. "S-so if we can't stop this by getting the books back, then we should be looking for, like— counterspells, or charms, or—"

Eliot set his book aside and picked up another, flipping through it purposefully. "There's Emerson's Alloy Repellant, but..." His voice trailed off as he rapidly turned pages, then he turned the book around to show the diagrams to Quentin. "It requires at least three casters to make one, and even then it takes eleven days before the spell is fully imbued in the target object." He closed the book and set it on the stack. "That said, this _is_ a magic school with tons of magic artifacts, so I'm sure that somewhere there's—"

"We're not _stealing,_ El," Quentin practically pleaded. "Aren't we in enough trouble already?"

"Well, what are they going to do, Quentin, double-expel us?"

It was the first time either of them had spoken the word out loud, and the first time they'd heard it since Dean Fogg had said it to them, nearly fourteen hours before. Hearing it now made Quentin's blood turn into ice in his veins, and he tore his gaze away from Eliot's, instead staring unseeing at the book in his lap. _You'll have twenty-four hours,_ Fogg had said in his most authoritative tone, _before the specialist will see both of you._ Quentin felt sick all over again just remembering it: ten hours from now, he won't remember magic, or Brakebills, or—

"Eliot," Quentin said, blinking as the words on the page beneath him slowly came into focus, "what about this?"

  


5 (continued). _and isn't it just so pretty to think?_

" _Quentin,_ " Eliot gasps, because it's really him, it's really _Quentin,_ dear, beautiful Quentin with his bottomless brown eyes and his smile that lights up the entire world. They had been standing three feet apart, like proper strangers, but Eliot moves to close the gap so hard and fast that he slams into Quentin like a wave against the shore, one arm grasping him close across his back while the other reaches for his face, his precious face, palm sliding over his cheek as Eliot reaches around to cup the back of Quentin's neck.

"Eliot," Quentin is saying, over and over, like he's making up for all the times he should've said Eliot's name in the past three years. "I can't believe—"

"It worked," Eliot finishes for him, and Quentin's smile is so wide and dazzling that Eliot simply has no choice but to lean down and kiss him, a brief press of lips that still manages to nearly overwhelm him. He remembers everything now, so clear and vibrant that Eliot can't believe he'd been made to forget: stumbling onto the Brakebills campus and feeling completely at ease for the first time in his entire life; taking the exam and catching the eye of the cute nerd across the aisle, flirting with him a little and overwhelmed when the cute nerd managed to fumblingly flirt right back; the way that Eliot and Quentin were inseparable right from the start, to the exclusion of everyone else; picnics on the Sea, afternoons rowing a boat down the Hudson, trysts in the library and the cottage reading nook and empty classrooms and everywhere, anywhere, because they were so completely head-over-heels in love. And then: Eliot and Quentin in Eliot's room at the cottage, the night before they were meant to be expelled, sitting on the floor in a ring of red rose petals, Eliot's left wrist bound to Quentin's right with a length of gold yarn. _If we can't stop the memory wipe spell,_ Quentin had said, struggling through his tears, _then we can at least make sure we find each other again._

"Coleridge's Invisible String." Quentin's entire face might as well be one continuous dimple. Eliot loves him more than he ever thought it was possible to love a person. "The book I found it in said it had no practical applications."

"Whoever compiled that book is a fucking idiot," Eliot says. He hugs Quentin close to him, resting his cheek against Quentin's head, breathing in the scent of Quentin's awful drugstore shampoo, which Eliot had forgotten the fragrance of not only because of the memory spell, but because he'd almost immediately thrown it away at Brakebills, replacing it with something fancier that was actually suited to Quentin's hair. Quentin's hair, so soft under his fingers, just like he'd imagined — _remembered_ — it would be.

"But why did our memories come back?" Quentin asks, voice muffled against the cashmere of Eliot's cardigan. "The book, it didn't say anything about—"

Unforeseen spell interaction, Eliot thinks as all the parts of his brain that understand how magic works whirl rapidly to life after years of dormancy, but instead he says, "The power of love, baby."

Quentin pulls back, scowling up at him, and Eliot laughs and kisses him all over his perfect face, forehead and eyebrows and cheeks and jaw and mouth.

"I can't believe you came to LA," Eliot says when he finally breaks away, his face still pressed so close to Quentin's that their lips nearly touch when he speaks. "How did you—"

"Julia thought I was crazy," Quentin says, breathless, laughing now too. "I mean, more crazy than baseline, and I never came up with a good explanation for why we couldn't just go to the Wizarding World in Florida but it was the spell, Eliot, it was the spell the whole time—"

Eliot smothers Quentin's words by kissing him yet again, pressing hard, licking deep into Quentin's open mouth. "And you must've been at Yale."

"Yeah, yeah I was." Quentin tilts his head, his mouth warm and soft on Eliot's jawline. "And I saw you there, on the Green, but I didn't— we could've—"

"Shhh," Eliot says, his hand cupping the back of Quentin's head, fingers tangling in Quentin's hair. "We literally didn't know. It doesn't matter now, anyway."

They just stand there for what seems like a long time, wrapped up in each other, as the sun sets behind the buildings, the wind stirring the fallen leaves and flower petals around them like confetti. Eliot tucks Quentin's head under his chin and lets his eyes drift closed; for the first time in years, he's exactly where he's meant to be. 

"So what happens next?"

Eliot doesn't know what happens next. Maybe the board at Brakebills will track them down once they find out that the memory spell didn't hold. Maybe they'll end up in a hedge safe house, hiding from the Library. Maybe they'll track down a portal that takes them halfway around the world. Or maybe nothing at all will happen, and they'll somehow get to— be together, like they should've been all along.

Wouldn't that be something?

But for now—

He pulls away, his hands on Quentin's biceps, holding him at arm's length. Letting himself look, just because he can. "I've missed you for three years without even knowing it, beautiful." Quentin blushes, and ducks his head, and smiles, brilliant as the sunset. "Don't you think you should take me home with you?"

**Author's Note:**

> surprise this is an au where quentin and eliot are in the same year at brakebills and fall instantly stupidly head-over-heels in love with each other. just so we're clear, neither julia nor margo were at brakebills in this universe (no secret conspiracies! the boys are just being the boys, as usual).
> 
> yell/cry with me on [tumblr](https://akisazame.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
